The general strike of 1842

As many as half a million workers may have been caught up in a strike wave which linked demands for the Charter and an end to pay cuts. This page tells the story and names the leaders.

“At its height, the General Strike of 1842 involved up to half a million workers and covered an area which stretched from Dundee and the Scottish coalfields to South Wales and Cornwall,” wrote Mick Jenkins in his readable and sympathetic account of the event. “It lasted twice the length of the 1926 General Strike, and was the most massive industrial action to take place in Britain – and probably anywhere – in the nineteenth century.”

At the root of the strike were the swingeing wage cuts that accompanied a downturn in trade, at a time when the economy had been in desperate straits for a full five years. But the strike grew into something far more than that as workers took up the political demands espoused by Chartism, leading to confrontation not just with employers but with the state. This account draws largely on Mick Jenkins’ book, The General Strike of 1842.

The idea for a general strike had been worked out in detail more than a decade before the events of 1842 by William Benbow, a self-educated Lancashire radical who had been involved in the Hampden Clubs after the Napoleonic wars, and later played a part in establishing the National Union of the Working Classes. Benbow had published his proposals in a pamphlet titled Grand National Holiday and Congress of the Productive Classes, and it formed part of the wider armoury of the Chartist movement – alongside petitions, “monster” meetings, and, for some at least, armed insurrection. Over the same period, the unions were also developing – changing in kind from secretive brotherhoods with pseudo-masonic rituals into early industry-wide organisations of the sort that would, despite the setbacks of the early 1830s, become commonplace in mid and late Victorian Britain.

Towards the end of 1841, the cotton industry entered a slump of unprecedented proportions. With unemployment rife, mill owners began to demand wage cuts – first at Droylsden, then into the new year at Chorley, Blackburn, Bolton and Ashton-under Lyne. Once obtained, they came back for more. There were also confrontations in the coal mines of Lancashire and the Midlands, and the chill winds of economic crisis even hit the engineering factories of Manchester and elsewhere.

During the summer of 1842, colliers in Staffordshire walked out over proposals to reduce their wages, and for the first time demands for shorter hours and better pay began to be linked with a demand that the People’s Charter be made the law of the land. The unrest spread, and in July began to centre on South East Lancashire, where in response to demands for a wage cut of 25% the mill workers of Ashton, Stalybridge, Dukinfield and Hyde called meetings to formulate their demands for a return to the wage levels of earlier years and to plan their next steps.

In his well-regarded A History of British Trade Unionism , Henry Pelling argues that the direct links between the unions and Chartism were “rather tenuous”. All the evidence seems to show, however, that the same individuals were called on time and again both to hold office in their local union organisations and to represent their communities in the wider Chartist networks. And in The General Strike of 1842 (Lawrence & Wishart 1980), Mick Jenkins makes a compelling case that, far from being the desperate rabble so often described in other histories, the mill and factory workers of the North West were in fact politically aware and quite able to make the link between demands demands for better wages and conditions and the need for the Charter.

Jenkins shows how in in late July and early August 1842, the focus of activity was in South East Lancashire, where the Chartists played the leading role in organising mass meetings to oppose wage cuts and make the case for the Charter. This was an important stage in building support for collective action later. Jenkins argues that these leaders succeeded in uniting workers who were more hesitant in their opposition to the employers behind the more militant factories and mills, and created a base for a widespread strike.

August 7 was a crucial day: two mass meetings of workers from Ashton and Staleybridge were held on Mottram Moor, and support was given for a “Grand National Turn-Out” to begin the next day. Support for the Charter was incorporated into the resolutions passed. The next day, the turn-out began as workers left their factories and began to move from workplace to workplace, “turning out” other workers to join them. The derogatory name often given to these events – the “plug plot” in fact derives from this time; as the workers closed down a factory they would frequently remove the boiler plug to prevent it restarting. The movement spread rapidly, not only in Manchester – a key objective of the political leadership – but in the towns around it. At Preston, Burnley, Blackburn, Chorley, Todmorden, Bacup, Stockport, Macclesfield, Leek, Congleton, Oldham, Glossop, Dukinfield, Wigan, Bolton, St Helens and in the mining villages, work ceased.

As the strike went on, the workers took control. Factories were permitted to operate only with the permission of “committees of public safety” that now began to emerge to co-ordinate action. These committees gave permission, for example, for work to be completed so that goods would not spoil or for humanitarian reasons. In one case, permission was granted to keep water pumps operating without which coal mines would have flooded. Jenkins concentrates on 15 men who constituted the leadership of the strike movement through their repeated appearnce at meetings, all of whom were local and 13 of whom were known Chartists. Go straight to a list of strike leaders.

The authorities were powerless: extra troops were drafted in from London and the South East – but even here, they had to run the gauntlet of angry strike supporters and were compelled to fix bayonets and march with police escorts to the trains that would carry them north. The civil authorities were powerless.

As all this played out, work was also under way to prepare for both a Trades Conference and a delegate conference of the National Charter Association. The former was unequivocally a forum for the leadership of the strike. Planned for 15 and 16 August, it was preceeded by meetings large and small across the region as groups of workers elected and instructed their delegates. Thousands attended such events in Manchester, Oldham and elsewhere. In Bacup, the Riot Act was read, but the workers continued their meeting for an hour and a half more. Elsewhere, the strike was spreading, with turn-out activities reported from as far afield as Glasgow and Merthyr Tydfil.

The Trades Conference itself opened on the morning of Monday 15 August at the Sherwood Inn. Alexander Hutchinson, representing the Manchester wiredrawers and card makers, was elected to the chair. Charles Stuart, representing the mechanics of Patricroft, was elected secretary. By lunchtime, the conference had adjourned to meet again at Carpenters Hall – the first venue proving too small. That day, 143 accredited delegates were present.

Attempts to separate wage demands from the Charter were soundly defeated – with 120 votes in favour of a resolution that explicitly linked the two. Of the 85 delegates who spoke or indicated their constituencies’ views, 58 were for the Charter, seven for making this a struggle for wages alone, 19 had been instructed to abide by the decision of the conference, and one had no mandate.

The conference achieved a great deal in organising the strike. It agreed a series of positions, made provision to support those on strike and elected a 12-strong executive to carry forward its plans. But within days, as the authorities grew stronger and realised that they must srike back or stand to lose everything, the principal leaders of the conference and of the strike were behind bars.

In the mean time, the Chartist conference had also taken place on 16 and 17 August. This event had been fixed for some time and was to mark the anniversary of Peterloo. Some of the National Charter Association’s leaders – principally Feargus O’Connor – were strongly opposed to the use of industrial action to promote their cause, and there is little reason to suppose that he or other leaders of the organisation knew in advance of the strike. Jenkins, however, argues: “It is tempting to suggest that the Peterloo commemoration represented an attemot by certain Lancashire Chartists to ensure the presence of the Association’s national leadership at a time when the strike movement would have already taken on a momentum of its own. Given what we know about the personalities involved and the nature of inner-Chartist politics, such an interpretation has its attractions.” He further points out that the man who proposed in March 1842 that the event should take place, Alexander Hutchinson, was also to be chair of the trades conference.

At first the Chartist leadership was suspicious of the strike, and O’Connor never quite abandoned the idea that it had all been got up by the Anti-Corn Law League – which largely represented the free-trade mill and factory owners – to discredit the Chartist movement and apply pressure to the trade protectionist government. In the midst of the events unfolding around Manchester, however, the conference had no option but to throw its weight behind the strike. From the moment it issued its first address in support, the strike became a national one. From Dorset to Norwich, Scotland to Somerset, turn-outs now spread. And in response, the government mobilised the troops – Grenadier Guards backed by artillery, the 34th regiment of foot, and the 73rd regiment were ordered north while a detachment of Royal Marines were moved to Woolwich to replace them.

Mass meetings took place in London between 17 and 20 August, and both the police and military were sent to disperse them. In Preston, troops fired on an unarmed crowd, killing four; soldiers also charged and fired on crowds at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Halifax and Skipton. But some elements of the state’s response proved less than solid – in Manchester, a troop of Chelsea Pensioners refused to confront a crowd of strikers; shopkeepers and others called up to act as special constables declined to act against the workers, and there were reports of soldiers being taken away in chains for refusing to fight.

Despite this, with regular troops now on the streets with fixed bayonets and many of the strike’s leaders now under arrest, the tide had turned against the strikers. The turn-outs ran on through August, and in many cases into September, with the Manchester weavers holding out to the last at the end of September. In many cases, mill workers went back with some element of their demand for a return to earlier wage levels met – or, at the very least, employers’ demands for wage cuts abandoned. But all hope of achieving the Charter was now lost.

In the aftermath of the strike, there were at first plans for a large-scale show trial, to take place in London, with O’Connor and others facing charges of treason that could have resulted in the death penalty. In due course, these plans were shelved, and a new approach was adopted. By the time of the trial, it had become clear that the government and judiciary had thought better of presenting the strike and the Chartist involvement in it as a well-thought out plan. Instead, it was to be presented as little more than an episode of mob violence by desperate workers in which the Chartists had become almost accidentally involved.

When the trial of O’Connor and 58 others eventually took place at Lancaster in 1843, the charges – though sounding draconian – were now less serious. And in the event, though some of those charged were found guilty, none was ever sentenced. Those arrested in Staffordshire and elsewhere were to prove less fortunate, and harsh sentences were handed down.

Actually the "holy month" was the name for the planned general strike of 1839. It took place but was limited mainly to the mines and iron works of the North East and South Wales and the milltowns of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

The strike was undermined by the Chartist Convention that had put itself at the head of the national preparations for the strike but had become paralysed shortly before it was to take place. This general strike was a bit like a sequel with lessons being learned from the failure of the first.

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